


To Give it a Name (To Give it Space and Time)

by onetiredboy



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Other, from the tomb days, idk how else to tag this, juno has to be the strong one for a change, nureyev is far too self-sacrificing, some description of under-eating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-12
Updated: 2020-01-12
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:27:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22224853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onetiredboy/pseuds/onetiredboy
Summary: Juno sighs after a moment. His fingers alight on my face, and the only thing that stops me from jolting is a decade or so of learned control over my reflexes being the line between life and death. I barely have even that restraint anymore.His fingers brush hair out of my forehead. I can tell by the awkward feel of it that it’s stiff with clotted blood, and he sighs.Then he leans down and kisses me on the space he’s cleared with his fingers.I open my eyes.Juno pulls away from me and settles back into the blankets before he glances over and our eyes meet.“You’re awake,” he says flatly.
Relationships: Peter Nureyev/Juno Steel
Comments: 17
Kudos: 171





	To Give it a Name (To Give it Space and Time)

**Author's Note:**

> there's some canon-typical description of injury, and fairly detailed reference to malnutrition in this! 
> 
> remember how i said i wasnt going to post anything for a while bc of the minibang........... well,

I allow Juno his time alone. It seems like the least I can give him.

Being locked up as we have been in our cell, there is very little to privacy. I have a few short minutes after our sessions, being that Juno is dragged in later than I am. I’ve come to treasure these minutes – they allow me time to lie on the floor and choke sobs into the stones and commit a hundred other acts of weakness that I cannot let Juno see but cannot continue without allowing myself to express.

He doesn’t get his time, and so after we’ve done our cursory dive into each other’s arms and I have treated all his wounds as best I can and made him eat, I shove down all the urges I have to crawl into his arms and crawl into the blankets instead, and I give him his space.

He cried once or twice, in the period between him being too stoic to be vulnerable and too exhausted to produce tears. Now he mostly fidgets, mutters to himself. Lets out long sighs. They’re the worst. I know he isn’t coping. I’m not either, but that pretence is the one part of my fake identity I’ve endeavoured to keep, if only for the brief way he looks at me when I catch his eye and smile like there’s a joke we’re both in on. Like I really believe we’re getting out of here.

Call me a fool, if you’d like, but if there’s nothing else I can be to Juno Steel, I’d at least like to be his optimist.

After a while, the blankets are cast aside, and I feel the warm, comforting solidity of Juno’s legs slide against mine. He moves away after he gets comfortable, then I hear him roll onto his side.

“Hey,” he whispers, “You awake?”

I don’t know what it is that makes me unable to answer him. It’s not suspicion or curiosity – there’s nothing I expect him to say to me while I am asleep that he wouldn’t while we are both awake. I suppose it just feels like less energy to let him believe I am asleep than to go through the ordeal of talking and moving. I suppose I feel I might as well be. Or maybe I feel like I don’t want to have intruded, even by only being awake in the same room, while he worked through whatever demons had been keeping him from resting tonight.

Juno sighs after a moment. His fingers alight on my face, and the only thing that stops me from jolting is a decade or so of learned control over my reflexes being the line between life and death. I barely have even that restraint anymore.

His fingers brush hair out of my forehead. I can tell by the awkward feel of it that it’s stiff with clotted blood, and he sighs.

Then he leans down and kisses me on the space he’s cleared with his fingers.

I open my eyes.

Juno pulls away from me and settles back into the blankets before he glances over and our eyes meet.

“You’re awake,” he says flatly.

I intend to tell him something like _only just now,_ or _barely, my dear, so go to sleep._ Hours and days and weeks of torture have weakened me, have twisted back my peel to force the skin underneath out into the open. I find myself too tired to keep up appearances, especially beside someone who makes me want to tear them all down on a good day. So instead of saying any of those safe things, I choke out a teary, “Thank you.”

Juno’s eyebrows furrow. His right is matted with blood and it makes me sick to think of what they’ve done to him, to make him bleed that high. Blood crusts under his nose and his face is bruised and dirty from collapsing on the ground. He’s in awful shape, but so am I – my ribs are starting to show and I keep my shirt on at all times so Juno doesn’t have to see the burns on my chest, the evidence of my malnutrition.

“Thank you for what?” His voice, when he’s not whispering, rasps. Dehydrated and damaged. I would be more sympathetic if I weren’t so broken down myself; as it is all I can do is share his pain with him.

When I sigh, my lungs hurt. It’s almost too much energy to say anything at all. “I’ve been worried. I know it’s stupid, and the last thing that should be on my mind, but I—”

“What?” Juno lowers his voice again. There’s this new tenderness to Juno Steel that I feel is only mine to witness because he’s been terrorised on my behalf, because reliance on each other is central to our survival. How do you put a name on that feeling? How do you give it value?

“I suppose I haven’t been sure what you must think of me,” I say at last. “For dragging you into this. I doubted very much you would feel very warmly towards me at all, underneath the fact that we’ve been… required to care for each other. Thank you for… showing me some kindness. Even if you thought I was asleep.”

“Nureyev…” Juno says softly.

“I know,” I tell him, and manage a laugh that sounds awfully like a wheeze, “It’s incredibly insecure. I’m sure the last thing on your mind right now is _me_ , is—us.”

“I…” Juno raises a scarred hand to brush the side of my face. The pads of his fingers are rough with dirt and dried blood, but the feeling is—

I have grown long accustomed to denying myself my own needs for a job. But it’s been a long time. And it’s hard to deny myself what I want when it’s being freely given to me. Touch. Attention. Affection. It’s overwhelming. I lean into his hand.

“We can’t play the blame game here,” Juno says at last. “And you have to trust me when I say that, because I’m practically an expert at that one. It’s all I’ve played for most of my life. If we start there we’re both going to be hating ourselves, or hating each other, and none of that matters. We both got ourselves here, Nureyev, and to think that I could ever hate you for this…”

Juno sighs. “Nureyev,” he says again, and then leans down.

He tastes awful, really. Like old blood and that dreadful food we’ve been rationed, only even worse somehow. His lips are chapped and his stubble is rough against my face.

He kisses me gently. Shortly. Like I might break if he doesn’t treat me just right. I can’t find space to care about any of those arbitrary details when I have Juno Steel kissing me that way. And then it hits me so hard all at once: relief. Relief floods me and I feel my body shaking before I’ve really noticed that I’m crying.

Juno pulls away, “Hey—”

“Sorry,” I get out, feeling tears roll down the sides of my face, “Not very romantic of me. And just after you said all those nice things! Trust me to ruin a moment.”

“It’s—” Juno looks at me and smiles with one corner of his mouth, “It’s been a long fucking day. Long fucking—God, year, it feels like. I think I can excuse you a few tears.”

I smile at him, and then I start sobbing with abandon. Juno curls into my side and lays his arm over me. He rubs a thumb over the piano-key shape of my ribs as they expand and contract erratically, and I know what he must be thinking: too skinny. I’m not cut out for another month of this. My metabolism, body type, and whatever else kept me this lean was good for many things, but not this. Not endurance.

“It’s okay,” Juno breathes, and I wonder if he’s read my mind. It’s so hard to tell. I… trust, somehow, that he hasn’t. It doesn’t seem like him to intrude. My hope is confirmed when he repeats it again – a mantra, not a response. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” he mumbles into my shirt, “We’re gonna get out of here.”

It draws a laugh from me, “Optimism is such an attractive look on you, Juno. You should try it more often.”

“Yeah, well don’t count on it. I’m going to have to wash my mouth out with soap,” he jokes, and kisses my chest. Then he settles his head on my chest and says, “Not fair to make you be the strong one all the time. Sorry for that.”

I raise my arms to wipe my eyes, which unsettles Juno from his comfortable position. He sits up, and then stands up, groaning. I hear his joints crack and it makes me grimace. “Where are you going?”

“Getting you water. Can’t be dehydrated,” Juno limps across the room to get one of the water bottles we’re given at the end of each session, though it’s almost empty, and then ambles back. “Sit up.”

I do as told, ignoring the searing pain on my chest, and Juno sits down beside me.

It’s stupid. I raise the hem of my shirt to wipe my eyes and I hear Juno’s breath catch.

“Oh,” he says quietly, and rubs his hand up my back, where I know my vertebrae line my skin like the spines of an ancient, dead creature. I can’t help but flinch. His hand moves immediately.

“Nureyev,” Juno says, his voice quiet but firm with determination, “You should’ve told me you weren’t eating enough. You could be having my rations, I’ve got to be, like, almost twice your weight by this point.”

“You’re a great deal more muscled than I am, and you have a broader structure. You’re just as in need of food as I am.”

Juno laughs and leans against my shoulder, “Idiot,” he mutters. “I’m fucking fat, Nureyev, I could survive without food for a few days.”

“Mm. But then you’d lose this beautiful figure,” I snake a hand under his shirt and grin as he grins back.

“You’d starve just so I could keep my thick thighs? Why does that sound exactly like something you’d do. You’re so stupid.” He kisses me, and it makes me think that if that’s the kind of stupid thing one has to do to woo Juno Steel, I could spend the rest of my life doing it.

“But,” I say to him when he parts from me, “All joking aside: thank you, Juno. I… think it would be a good idea for me to take more of the rations from now on, if it really doesn’t bother you.”

“I’ve been considering a diet for a while now,” Juno shrugs a shoulder, “Didn’t think it’d take being kidnapped and tortured every day for me to get around to it, but honestly I can’t say I’m surprised. I always was fuck-awful at seeing things through.”

He hasn’t been like this – joking, light hearted, for a long time. I know he’s doing it for me, as much as I’m sure the toll of less food will be hard on him with what his body goes through every day. Even now, as he smiles, his bruised lip has split and his exhaustion is etched into every movement, in the way he slumps as though he can barely find the balance to sit. But he’s right. Having me waste away won’t do him any good. Not when we rely on each other so much like this. And after I have some strength back, maybe we can convince Miasma that two nutrient bars a night is nowhere near sufficient for keeping us both alive.

Juno forces me the rest of the bottle of water in small mouthfuls. His demeanour seems to settle as he does, retreating back into the quiet, hard-eyed detective I’ve seen haunting this cell so often.

He throws the bottle of water aside and lowers me back into bed, nestling in beside me. He leans over me on one elbow, has the other hand over my chest as though he is trying to feel my heart beating.

“Nureyev,” he says finally. “Listen to me, I—”

He licks his lips, glances away, then back, “I don’t… know. What we are, yet. Or what I feel about you. This—this isn’t the time or place to be thinking about it, o-or trying to work it out, and honestly I—I don’t even know how much of this, of tonight, would’ve even happened if we weren’t so fucking past being able to lie to each other.”

So there’s the truth of it, then. It’s exactly as I thought, but it hurts all the same. I manage to nod, “I understand.”

“But,” Juno continues, “I… this is nice. Having each other when we need it. So I think, maybe… we should just keep doing… whatever feels natural, in any moment. We don’t need to name it, or… or even continue it, after all of this is done, but…”

“What happens in the ancient Martian torture tomb stays in the ancient Martian torture tomb, eh?” I manage to arch a brow.

Juno leans his head into my shoulder and manages a rusty laugh. “Yeah,” he says, “Something like that.”

“Alright,” I curl one arm around him, “Okay, Juno. I think you’re right. It’s too much to be thinking about how to treat each other amongst all of this.”

“Good,” Juno says, and then he yawns. “We should probably try to rest before we get dragged back out to fun-land out there,” he grates. He makes no move to roll away from me. We’ve slept close before, held each other when we were shuddering in aftershocks of Miasma’s toolkit, but never consciously. Intentionally. 

I lean down, and kiss somewhere among the tangle of Juno’s curls. Then I lean my head back. “Thank you, Juno,” I say.

“’S’alright, honey,” he murmurs, his voice sleep-slurred, and for a moment I do hope he has been reading my mind all this time, if only to know, in this exact second, the way he makes me feel.

Tomorrow the torture starts again, and this moment will be long buried under fresh bruises and fresh exhaustion. But right now, the aches in my body and the torment in my mind find refuge. Juno is okay. We – us, as an item – _we_ are okay, even if not yet defined. Somehow, that moment of relief is just enough to refresh my determination. We are going to survive this place. I refuse to be denied the chance to see what we will both be able to do together, after.

Something tells me it’s going to be beautiful.

**Author's Note:**

> aaaaand then nureyev got smash and dashed!
> 
> anyway it seemed like tradition for penumbra authors to write about miasma so here i am! if u enjoyed pls kudos & comment ily ty!


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